On Brazilian agriculture, energy-efficient lighting, football and Korea, Kashmir, British motorcycles, dirty oil

SIR – Your briefing paints a cheery picture of the potential for Brazil to meet the world's growing food needs (“The miracle of the cerrado”, August 28th). However, two important facts should temper our optimism about this remarkable agricultural story.

First, Brazilian climate change law requires steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020: 36-39% below 2005 levels. The government plans to achieve this through an 80% reduction in deforestation in the Amazon region and a 40% reduction in deforestation of the cerrado savannah. It is on track to reach the Amazon goal, but will only succeed in curbing the 7,000-20,000 plus square kilometres of annual clearing in the cerrado if most agricultural expansion moves onto unproductive cattle pastures. An even greater challenge for Brazil and a world facing a dangerous climatic disruption will be to diminish agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels and noxious chemicals.

Second, you perpetuate the view of the cerrado as the expendable, scrubby neighbour of the far more glamorous Amazon rainforest. In fact, it has more plant and animal species than any other savannah in the world and is more threatened than the rainforest—at least in the coming decade. The world is moving rapidly into a food crisis and there are no free lunches.

Daniel NepstadWoods Hole Research CentreWoods Hole, Massachusetts

SIR – You are correct to say that recent innovations in Brazilian agriculture have been truly miraculous. However, the cerrado needs a second miracle—one of conservation and sustainable use—if any of this unique biome is to survive.

Conservation is urgent not just to prevent the loss of 12,000 plant species of which 40% are found nowhere else. The cerrado is also providing ecosystem services. Recent climate-vegetation models suggest that excessive cerrado clearance could lead to the drying up and loss of rainforest in south Amazonia.

*SIR – Your story promoting the expansion of commercial agriculture in Brazil's cerrado, and its imitation by African countries ignored the fact that the cerrado is the biologically richest savannah on earth. It is the home of unique wildlife and nearly half of its highly diverse plant community is found nowhere else on earth. Nevertheless you repeated the centuries-old error of seeing savannahs, grasslands and prairies as worthless and empty, fit only for conversion to pastures and soyabean fields. This, despite the fact that over half of the cerrado has already been converted—far more than the Amazon rainforest.

Ironically, Brazil itself has moved beyond this outdated point of view. Most of its remarkable increase in agricultural output in recent years has come from increasing yields, not from expansion of cultivation and pastures, and its national plan to combat climate change establishes the goal of reducing deforestation in the cerrado by 40% over the next decade (and by 80% in the Amazon). This is the kind of far-sighted plan that other countries should be imitating, not your clear-it-all boosterism.

Doug BoucherUnion of Concerned ScientistsWashington, DC

*SIR – Although you are right in describing Brazil's cerrado as a “miracle”, your reasoning for the accolade is wide of the mark. The importance of the cerrado to Brazil's people and economy and to the increasing demands of “feeding the world” should not go unnoticed. But neither should its relationship with the Amazon, or its own ecological importance.

True enough, the land in this vast savannah has become more economically valuable due largely to soyabean plantations. Also true is that “hardly any of this new [agricultural] land lies in Amazonia”. Yet, the resultant rises in land value have simply pushed cattle-ranching into the Amazon.

Neither should we forget the ecological importance of both areas. The Amazon has long been the “poster-boy” for conservation messaging, but the cerrado is a biodiversity miracle in its own right: home to 5% of the world's biodiversity from the giant armadillo to the maned wolf (both already endangered) and over 10,000 plant species, 44% of which are endemic.

Two-thirds of the area has already disappeared. To save what remains will require more sustainable production. We are not asking for a miracle. We are simply asking for agriculture to be reconciled with biodiversity conservation. Through the Roundtable on Responsible Soy, we are working with some of the world's leading businesses to ensure that happens.

David NussbaumCEO,WWF-UKGodalming, Surrey

*SIR – The Amazon is not the only diverse ecosystem in Brazil; the cerrado is the most biologically diverse savannah in the world. Less than 3% is protected. Agriculture and ranching, of which you speak so glowingly, are the prime causes of the cerrado's endangered status. Much of the agriculture is cash crops and not foodcrops like race and beans. Growing soyabeans which are then exported to feed pigs in North America and Europe is by no means a sustainable activity, nor is increasing ranchland to grow more beef. Yes, it's a scientific miracle, but at what cost?

SIR – Whilst in no way belittling Embrapa's contribution to Brazil's agricultural success, your briefing gives little credit to the role of private enterprise. The enabling technology of Zero or No Tillage was first developed in Brazil by a team of agronomists and engineers under ICI in 1972. A ten-year agreement was signed by them with IAPAR, the Parana Agricultural Research Institute, and Brazilian machinery manufacturers, notably Semeato.

Good government policy can enable and Embrapa certainly has done that, but without the involvement of private enterprise success is rarely achieved.

Brian O'Dwyer Gowan Mexicana Mexicali, Mexico

*SIR – I have a great admiration for Embrapa but others laid the foundations. The discovery that the infertile soils of the cerrado can be made productive are due solely to the initiative of the private sector American IRI Research Institute funded by the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund and Brazilian agro-industry. Dr Colin McClung, ex-IRI, was co-recipient of the World Food prize in 2006 for this soil fertility work. In fact, it was IRI president, the late Jerome Harrington, who drew up in 1971, the original blueprint for the string of commodity centres which is now Embrapa.

John N. LandersFounder, Cerrado Zero Tillage AssociationBrasilia

*SIR – Embrapa could not have been established without a cadre of well-trained scientists available to staff the institution. These scientists were available because Brazil identified talent and many of these young people received higher education training in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia. The development of institutions to solve our food security challenges can only occur if we invest in the intellectual capital of nations and then create the institutions that enable those well-trained scientists to have gainful employment. Such training programmes have been reduced greatly in the past two decades by many developed countries. Reinvigorating them to target areas with the greatest challenges in food security can lead to successes such as that seen in Brazil.

*SIR – Your informative article on Brazil usefully emphasised the contributions of the public research company, Embrapa, to the country's impressive agricultural performance. Less informed was your surprise that the country's then-ruling generals could have established such an effective institution “in an unusual fit of farsightedness”. While indeed farsighted, the generals' support for Embrapa was not that unusual.

Brazil's successful sugar/ethanol industry owes much to similarly impressive public institutions promoted by these same farsighted generals in the face of petroleum price hikes that jeopardised the military's ability to rule. A roughly similar dynamic occurred in Chile, where financial instability and popular discontent prompted the Pinochet government to promote Fundación Chile, a quasi-public research institute and business incubator that has made key contributions to the country's successful agriculture and aquaculture sectors.

Understanding the origins of institutions such as Embrapa and Fundación Chile has important implications for whether the “miracle of the cerrado” can be exported. The key question is not whether other countries' researchers, farmers and entrepreneurs have the potential to absorb and adapt available technology. They clearly do. Instead the question is what kinds of political pressures prompt leaders to be farsighted by promoting institutions that facilitate effective agricultural research and development?

SIR – Your surprisingly negative article on energy efficient lighting technologies (“Not such a bright idea”, August 28th) appears to have resulted from a misunderstanding of our paper in the Journal of Physics.

Unfortunately, your writer's reasoning erred by comparing today's per capita mixed light consumption with the projected 2030 consumption for all-solid-state lighting (SSL), rather than comparing the projected 2030 consumption with and without SSL. Because of this “apples and oranges” comparison, you drew a number of erroneous conclusions. For instance, you stated that in 2030 a tripling of electricity prices would be required before energy consumption for lighting declined. In fact, our paper shows that, for the two 2030 scenarios (with and without solid-state lighting), a mere 12% increase in real electricity prices would result in a net decline in electricity-for-lighting consumption. This “green” result is obtained while at the same time enabling consumers in 2030 to use three times more light with SSL than without it. Your amusing but hopefully tongue-in-cheek conclusions about the “greenness” of incandescent lighting would be, if serious, off-base and in our view potentially harmful.

SIR – You describe the Korea 2022 World Cup bidding committee's plan to offer North Korea the chance to stage games in Pyongyang as “eccentric” (“Dreaming of 2022”, September 4th).

But had you been at the Seoul games in 1988 and declared that the cold war was about to end, you would have been labelled as more than eccentric. You are wrong to suggest that Korea wants to host the World Cup to see the North Korean team humiliated on the pitch. Anyone with any knowledge of the peninsula would know that South Koreans were delighted and proud to see North Korea qualify for the 2010 World Cup.

It is no secret that the unique problems of the Korean peninsula have given many a headache to politicians and diplomats over the years. Perhaps a huge global sporting event could succeed when other efforts have failed. At least we can be forgiven for looking outside the usual channels to find that long elusive peace.

Han Sung-jooChairman, Korea 2022 Bidding CommitteeSeoul

The Kashmir question

SIR – Banyan suggests that the problem of Kashmir has a political solution (“Vale of tears”, August 28th). It does not. If the status quo persists, then insurgency, rebellion and rioting will continue. The option of self government within India for Kashmir is unacceptable to its people, who would consider it as a step to quitting India entirely.

If India were to consider pulling out of Kashmir, it would have to ensure that Kashmir would remain sovereign and independent and did not become a part of Pakistan. Only under such (theoretical) circumstances could India ever allow Kashmir to leave. But an independent Kashmir will inevitably want to be reunited with the “other” Kashmir, the 5,000 square miles of “Azad” (free) Kashmir, which Pakistan has ruled separately since 1947.

The conclusion has to be that Pakistan would not allow an independent Kashmir to exist at all as that would involve Pakistan either losing “Azad” Kashmir or having to face an insurgency of its own. Worse, if there were a Pakistani invasion of a newly independent Kashmir, war with India would surely follow.

Tony McArdle,Tipperary, Ireland

The bonus of Bonneville

SIR – The writer of the article on British universities has a broad knowledge of the subject (“Hustling spires”, August 7th). Unfortunately his knowledge of the British motorcycle industry is more limited. There has never been a “BSA Triumph”. Perhaps you meant the BSA Lightning or the Triumph Bonneville? The former's demise exemplifies the point you were trying to make about the decline of British motorcycle manufacturing. The latter has been the flag bearer for the resurrection of that industry in the 21st century, with innovation and attention to quality that British universities could learn from.

Mark BoydSydney, Australia

Dirty oil

*SIR – While critics have tried to brand oil sands crude as “dirty oil”, the facts around oil sands development, and world oil use in general, provide a more balanced story (“Tarred with the same brush”, August 7th).

To single out Canadian crude oil as “dirty” is misleading. While your article cited estimates that greenhouse gas emissions associated with production are higher than the average barrel in the United States, it did not note that the vast majority of these emissions (75-80%) occur from the use of fuels, not their production. The article also missed the point that the oil sands can be less intensive than several other forms of crude oil used in North America, including production from California, Angola, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Independent analysis from Cambridge Energy Research Associates has demonstrated that overall greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands are only 5-15% higher than the average crude oil consumed in the United States.

Oil sands companies operate within strict federal and provincial regulatory frameworks that cover land and tailings reclamation, water use limits, and provincial GHG reduction targets. Governments in Canada as well as industry are continuing to discover and implement ways to develop the oil sands in a manner that improves environmental performance. For example, the Canada government is developing and investing in new processes to improve tailings management and technologies such as carbon capture and storage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil sands. Our laboratory in Devon, Alberta is also leading the development of dry stackable tailings in the oil sands which could cut water consumption in half and reduce the need for tailings ponds.

It is also important to note that the industry is increasingly employing drilled or in situ oil sands production. While this process has its own challenges that are being addressed, it involves no open pit mining, no tailings ponds, and, on average, uses far less water.

Canada, along with other countries, is moving towards a lower carbon energy economy. However, it is widely accepted that the transition will take time and the world will continue to need oil for decades to come. Moreover consumption of unconventional crude will increase as conventional crude oil sources decline. This requires a robust approach to developing new forms of clean energy while reducing the impacts of the traditional fossil fuels on which we all rely. Canada, with its vast energy resources, is at the forefront of this trend.